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"This movie is filled with surprises, and you don't know who the main character is. Jack Nicholson, at the beginning, you think he is a roughneck, but all of a sudden –- 10 – 15 minutes into the movie –- you find out he is actually a concert pianist. And, then, he slowly makes his way home to this island in Seattle and as you go (it’s where the famous chicken salad sandwich scene is), you sort of move from the urban environment into the country ‘til you get stripped down and you see he is from this family of musicians and teachers and this really pretentious music background. That transition was something I really wanted to do in [“Are You Here”]. I also love the way it tells the story of what’s going on in America at that time, not just through the hitchhikers that they pick up on the way there, but when it stops. When the road part of it is over, you get a sense of, and it became a symbol of, the dissatisfied individual in an increasingly over-developed, over-technologized, over-bureaucratized, frustrating America. It’s funny, but it’s not the comic road trip thing. But, it is to me, the greatest road trip movie."

"'Easy Rider' is a movie about a couple of guys, who don’t really have names. They do a drug deal, get some cash, and go riding across the country and they encounter -– in an episodic structure –- every asset of what is really going on in the States at that time. They eventually take LSD in New Orleans, they go to a commune. There’s just a real feeling of appreciating the natural environment of the United States, but there’s this undercurrent of conflict. There’s a constant battle between who is subversive and who is free -- and who is trying to stop that. And it has a really amazing ending and great music. I mean, if the road trip is defined by people moving in a vehicle through music, you’re not going to do better than that."

"As a father of four –- even before I was a father of four –- 'Vacation' is the best road trip movie and the worst road trip movie. Anything that can go wrong in this attempt to get to their goal (i.e., destination) does. The journey is supposed to be the exciting part; it’s often the lesson of it. In this thing, the journey is a nightmare. From having a crappy car to a dead relative to stopping and seeing Randy Quaid, just everything in that movie cracks me up. You feel everything go awry in it and, of course, the message underneath it is 'you’re traveling with your family and this was supposed to be fun' and anyone who’s been on that vacation understands that."

"I love 'Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.' Another trip home movie with two people who don’t belong together, John Candy and Steve Martin. John Candy is this hilariously frustrating person, completely over-the-top, and then, every once in a while, he will just turn around and break your heart. It has this great feeling of being a stranded traveler, which makes you sort of appreciate taking the long way. It’s making you desperate at one point: 'Can we get this over with? What are these two people doing together? This guy’s driving me nuts.' And then you sort of think the best part of it was spending time with that guy."

"'The Wizard of Oz' is the ultimate road movie: having your house taken away by a tornado, ending up in an incredibly weird place, and having to rely on strangers. There’s something about the episodic structure of these movies that you really don’t know what’s going to happen, and there’s no formula. It can make it both extra tense and extra nightmarish at times, and also really emotional when you meet someone on the road of value, and someone speaks to you. It’s not only 'there’s no place like home.' Everything about that to me is a metaphor for the journey of life, or the journey from childhood to adulthood. It’s just filled with imagination, and good triumph. She’s brave."

What is wrong with these so called critics, what makes them right, How do they rate what they watch. Im quite sure it is based on some topic that is spoken at some yuppie coffee shop. I think this movie is great. Good lord you yuppie wanna be humans. Find a real job as this one is not for you.

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"Are You Here" writer and director Matthew Weiner spent the last two decades in television, in which he was instrumental in bringing not one but two of the most popular and important TV shows of the e...

"Are You Here" writer and director Matthew Weiner spent the last two decades in television, in which he was instrumental to not one but two of the most popular and important TV shows of said decades...